A forty-year research program: and what about tomorrow?

The concept of “regulation” has inspired a significant body of research during the past forty years. An initial wave of studies[1] analyzed the unprecedented post-World War II growth regimes in Western economies, in order to understand their structural crisis since the late 1960s. Since that time, the field has developed international systemic comparisons in order to explore alternatives. The success of the concept, witnessed both by its heuristic power and its key presence in major debates at that times, is undoubtedly due to its ability to combine various complementary approaches ranging from Kaleckian, Keynesian and Marxist to institutionalist and socio-economy methods and theories. This success also stems from shared concerns for the general interest, particularly the Keynesian emphasis on full employment.

To date, however, regulation theory has not taken full advantage of its competitive advantage, despite significant—if not widely known—developments and outcomes: beyond public macroeconomics, the field now encompasses new research areas such as sectorial analysis (finance, services, health, farming…) and regional economics, analysis of institutions and politics, and microeconomics. Clearly, this lack of prominence is at least partly due to three types of misunderstandings:
1. semantic, given the mainstream confusion with the customary American sense of ‘regulation’;
2. interpretative, by limiting the scope of the concept of regulation to Fordism, which is only one of its outcomes (i.e. a historical configuration of an accumulation regime and mode of regulation, in some countries and for a given period);
and 3. conceptual, involving confusions between method, school, and theory.

Still, the resilience of mainstream economics—although grossly ignoring the many possibilities of market failures—remains puzzling given the current crisis. Therefore, from a more constructive perspective, the critical survey of the achievements of the regulation agenda is challenging, and calls for clarifying and strengthening relationships with concepts and issues (such as institution, convention, or governance) both within economics and in other social sciences.
The challenge is thus two-fold: empowering alternatives to mainstream economics, which actually fuels the current crisis; and addressing socio-economic structural changes and political demands for a more sustainable world that question the very conceptual foundations of economics. Shared by several contemporary approaches, these challenges should lead economists to develop new research projects and synergies within economics and with other social sciences. The organizers of the “Research & Regulation 2015 Conference” intend this occasion to be fully open to critical discussion and collaborative research projects.

(1) In the case of France, see applied empirical long-term studies—the earliest ones being published in 1974-75—on the productive system (INSEE), capitalism and crises (Aglietta), on regulation and inflation (CORDES report), etc.

Scientific orientations

TOPICS. All proposals are welcome, but the organizing committee especially encourages contributors to take positions on particularly pressing issues in times of crisis, whether to explore how to translate them into a scientific research program or to discuss their results.

➢ WHAT SHOULD BE THE PRIORITIES FOR A RESEARCH PROGRAM TODAY?

– What would be determining factors in shaping economic analysis over the next few years: demography, gender, modes of consumption, habitat…?
– Are ecological problems bound to be the very key factors in all future accumulation regimes? How far is degrowth conceivable and compatible with the logic of capitalism?
– Can scientific researchers tell which modes of regulation are within reach—beyond the question of their desirability or non-desirability—? Can they clarify the determining factors for such modes of regulation to be institutionalized?
– In times of short-termist finance domination, how can the long-term legitimacy of a political order be conceived of and implemented?—instead of being subject first to efficiency and financial outcomes?
– Which is the regulationist analysis of the increasing inequalities in nearly every country? Are they outcomes of common—or even global—mechanisms, or should inequality regimes be related to local modes of development?
– What does the future hold for supra-national organizations? Conversely, despite globalization, will the Nation-State continue to constitute the locus for enacting democratic principles? What can be learned from European integration?

➢ THE ECONOMIST AND THE EXPERT, SCIENCE AND POLITY.

– Must researchers—or should they avoid to—assist political decision-makers, and who is entitled to rebuild relations between politics and economics? At what level must economists assess the inherent normativity of every scientific process? What biases induce the political preferences or the practical commitments of a researcher (in consultancy, finance, business)?
– To what extent can we infer a failing of polity from the tendency, in state decision-making processes, to turn to technical criteria and experts for assessing scientific research or social programs, to subjugate public funding to projects rather than to organizations—and from the international standardization of this way of public management—? on the contrary, to what extent can we argue for the empowerment of polity thanks to the ration­alization of the state decision-making (social, industrial, research, monetary… policies)?
– What lessons can we draw from comparative analysis of public policies regarding research and the selection process for positions, budgets, etc., about how those policies impact the production of scientific knowledge?

➢ NEED AND POSSIBILITY FOR AN INTEGRATED RESEARCH? Is it possible to sort out a common research program from the different so-called “non-mainstream” approaches, beyond the specialization of individual fields and research areas? To what extent is this even desirable?

➢ IS THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL STATUS DECISIVE? What should the status of qualitative methods be in economics? What methodological requirements should there be? For example: even if the age of positivism has ended, can one avoid falsification as a motivating force of empirical research? What unity can or should be envisioned for comparative approaches in social science disciplines?

➢ WHICH MULTIDISCIPLINARY STRATEGIES? Should economics be considered only as one of the many components of social sciences or should we seek a fully integrative social sciences paradigm? In view of the difficult dialogue between the social disciplines—law, political science, geography…—not to mention the increasing specialization that characterizes most sub-disciplines, how best to promote research strategies that enable appropriation of the knowledges produced in other disciplines and fields?
In addition to the historical and analytical analysis, to the institutionally situated rationality approach, to the testing and modeling of regularities implied by institutional forms, how can the field best incorporate new tools such as network analysis, which has proved relevant to analyze the emergence of norms, the formation of economic policy and even crisis and the evolution of contemporary financial systems?

The program of the Colloquium provides different discussion formats. In addition, please note that selected papers will be proposed for publication in various formats, such as peer-reviewed journals (Revue de la Régulation, Revue française de socio-économie, Journal of Institutional Economics, Socio-Economic Review, Economie rurale…), books or proceedings.

Practical informations

DATE. The Conference will be held in Paris (université Paris-Diderot) from June 10 to 12, 2015.

FORMATS. The topics addressed by the contributions to the Research and Regulation 2015 Conference are not limited, but the submitted papers must clearly set out how they are positioned: within epistemological or theoretical issues; conceptual or empirical; whether they present results, a survey or a programmatic approach.
The committee will also examine proposals that sum up state-of-the-art knowledge in specific areas, whether methodological or field-based (Be aware that such state-of-the-art papers must follow particular formal constraints: see section “Event Organization” below).
The program of the Conference provides different discussion formats, in addition to plenary sessions:

– TWO TYPES OF RESEARCH WORKSHOPS HAVE BEEN SET UP:
• « varia » workshops: will be thematically created (as either one session or a track) by the organizing committee with selected proposals which are not submitted to “planned” workshops (see below).
• « planned »workshops: The scientific committee has already planned around thirty research workshops, selected from proposals (deadline closed since June 15) by one or several organizers in charge of the scientific program and organization.

– A TRAINING WORKSHOP « master class » intended for doctoral students, but open to other participants (NB: free access but prior registration will be required).

NB: selected presentations will be proposed for publication in a variety of formats, such as peer-reviewed journals, books or proceedings; specifics will be provided by the organizers prior to the Conference.

SCHEDULES AND FORMAL REQUIREMENTS.

DELIVERABLES

DEADLINES

Proposals of planned research workshops.See the application form below.

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